CITY HALL GETS SEISMIC RETROFIT

Craftmanship is solid, but unreinforced brick calls for needed bracing

Cost of retrofitting Cultural Center and two-story wing of City Hall built in 1934

With a section of drywall removed in the original section of Lake Elsinore City Hall, the solid craftmanship and quality material that went into building the structure in 1934 are plainly on display.

“All the bricks we’re finding are stamped with Pac. Clay on them — the local guys,” said Lake Elsinore Engineering Inspector Scott Rippstein.

He pointed to an interior wall sheered off to reveal pinkish-orange bricks laid one on top of the other, material supplied by Pacific Clay, a quality brickmaker still operating on Lake Elsinore’s northern border.

“They used good mortar with this brick,” said Henriquez, “It was kind of hard to break this wall.”

As solid as the building may look, it has a major problem, which is why Henriquez’s crew with Los-Angeles based Sea Pac Engineering was on the scene this week.

The city straddles the Elsinore fault, and because the south side of today’s municipal headquarters was constructed using unreinforced masonry, there’s a good chance of it collapsing in a strong earthquake.

“It’s just bricks piled on top of each other,” Rippstein said, showing how brittle their composition is by crumbling a chunk in his hand.

That’s why the city, with the help of about $875,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has embarked on a $1.7 million project to make the two-story wing at City Hall, as well as the Cultural Center down the street where public meetings are held, as safe as possible in a quake.

To accommodate the work at City Hall, the spaces that formerly housed the city clerk’s and city manager’s offices as well as other rooms have been vacated and those functions squeezed into the more recently built section on the facility’s north side.

Because of the inconvenience, the city has put a priority on finishing the City Hall work before being immersed in the Cultural Center phase.

“This is a snap,” Henriquez said of the City Hall aspect of the project. “The Cultural Center will be more difficult because it’s a historical building.”

Also, the work in the building, which is designated as a Riverside County historical landmark, will be more extensive because it is much bigger than the City Hall section, whose ground floor is about 5,200 square feet with a much smaller upstairs section.

The Sea Pac workers had a good start on the City Hall work Tuesday, having installed steel rods, commonly known as rebar, from foundation to ceiling in three sections where the structure will be bolstered. Those areas are awaiting cement to be poured that, in conjunction with the rods, will buttress the wing’s solid crossbeams.

“It will give strength to the center of the building so it won’t break apart,” Henriquez said.

He anticipated the City Hall phase will be done by the end of this month.

“The pouring should be done by the end of the following week and should take about a week to put up the drywall and finish stuff,” he said.

Once completed, the seismic retrofits will allow the city to take down signs warning visitors to enter at their own risk.